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I'm certain Waze could display this data, or make it available to display. But, since Waze is not currently focused on the general navigation market, but on the commuter market only (read the About/general info in the app stores), I doubt they see this as a value-add for their (current) core market. Not that I don't like it, but they likely feel they need to stick to their business plan to be successful.

Down the road, when they expand into general navigation, there are MANY features which need to be added.

harling wrote:Under any signal conditions, no matter how poor, even a rough estimate in the third dimension will be an improvement over NO estimate in the third dimension, when it comes to discriminating between two roads at different altitudes.

I disagree here. If the best case scenario is off by 20m (60ft+), that would have Waze estimating you on the bottom level of a 3-level stack instead of the top. I don't see how that is any better than providing no information at all and just using what we have. Most people do not start navigating in the middle of a stack. That and Waze deciding to re-route are about the only time when Waze should get confused about where you are in the stack. It knows how you got there, and most of these don't allow you to switch between levels in the middle, so I don't really understand why elevation is needed. The road you are on is the road Waze guided you in on, most of the time.

For those of us who spend a lot of time driving in the mountains, this would be a really useful feature. I know the GPS data supports it, as I can get it from other apps on my iPhone, and my Garmin will display elevation.

Elevation (altitude) could be either an added data field on the map, or it could be an option that replaces an existing field, like speed.

Waze is great for commuters. Last night it took me on a totally awesome route to avoid tunnel backup caused by the World Series, saving probably 15 minutes (or two innings of the pitchers dual).

But, I also use Waze for weekend commuting to the mountains. Many of the Waze features seem more focused to long distance trips. I already know the cheap gas stations, Starbucks, and fast food locations are for my commute, but they are still available. Going to the mountains it is a totally different story, as I travel through 200 miles of territory that I have never left the freeway. That is where I need (and use) the help finding cheap gas and dinner.

BTW, bicycling commuters also would use altitude... In this case for route planning. I guess this argues for the 3D model...

I still see some merit in this tbh. Would help a long way towards a "eco mode" for routing. Besides, GPS traces from many users can be averaged on the altitude anyway to give a decent indication of the real height in the same way it's done currently for lat/long.

The only reason I would see altitude data as useful is for an economical mode, less hilly terrain being more fuel friendly. The errors we are talking about are for a single point in time by one gps device. Surely, if you have 3 or 100 at that one position, you could cut away the really high ones, the really low ones, and take the average of the rest to get a pretty accurate reading? It could be stored in the gps trace part of the database (might even already be there), and routes calculated using that data for the economy mode as I explained above. No one think this is a good idea, both as an idea, and technically?

This idea has been discussed before. IMO elevation data would be a big help in placing the vehicle on the proper road, in areas where there are overpasses, underpasses & ramps crossing each other & running in parallel at various levels. It would also allow for some neat 3-D client rendering when the time comes. My only question is, what to do about elevation when the geometry of a road is changed in WME: interpolate the elevations of the new geometry nodes based on existing elevations, until we have actual data from GPS tracks?

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:I'm certain Waze could display this data, or make it available to display. But, since Waze is not currently focused on the general navigation market, but on the commuter market only...

Actually, the problem areas that I have in mind in Boston--multiple levels of overlapping, often nearly-parallel ramps--become a major difficulty for Waze when the Log/Lat is within the margin of error of three roads at different levels, each of which leads to a very different destination. And they carry a lot of commuter traffic, and generate their share of URs to the effect that Waze put them on the wrong road, and of course the directions to get them "back" are completely wrong.